About Jim Hittinger’s GRAVEYARD SHIFT:Graveyard Shift explores a sparsely populated world littered with empty lots, depleted suburban subdivisions, and chain-link fences tracing the confines of sites where things once were. Beacons and warning signs mark isolated islands of activity within the void: flags, sirens, neon markings on diseased trees, used car lot inflatable dancing men. The entire world is the outskirts of somewhere else. On the surface the world appears lifeless, but its inhabitants go through the motions of living; they celebrate holidays, bury their dead, and play baseball.

Snowman, 2016

Jim Hittinger received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 2012 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from The University of Minnesota in 2015. His work has been widely exhibited locally and nationally, including recent exhibitions at Whitdel Arts in Detroit, Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis. He currently teaches in the Department of Art at The University of Minnesota. Jim Hittinger

Shannon Estlund, Untitled, oil on canvas, 48 x 60”, 2017

About Shannon Estlund’s LOW VISUAL DISTANCE: Shannon Estlund’s abstracted landscapes are inspired by Rice Creek and the surrounding forest near her home in Fridley, Minnesota. The title Low Visual Distance refers to the way that dappled light, physical obstructions, and abstractions of form complicate an objective understanding of these spaces. Instead, the paintings offer a psychological interpretation of each site. The subjects of the paintings, which include downed trees, stagnant pools, and tangles of brush, demonstrate various states of growth and decay. Subjects are rendered using overlapping imagery, expressive color, repeating pattern, and abstracted form as a metaphor for a subjective and ever-changing perception of reality. The paintings in this exhibition represent a practice in becoming comfortable with the unknown and appreciating the impermanent and interdependent nature of all things.

Fifty Three Degrees, 2017

Shannon Estlund holds a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and received her B.F.A. from the University of Florida. Shannon currently teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Augsburg College. She has received several grants for her work from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Community Foundation. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at museums and galleries including the Crisp Ellert Art Museum (FL), the Elmhurst Art Museum (IL), Soo Visual Art Center (MN), the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens (FL), and at the National Galleries of Scotland. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and Studio Visit magazines. Shannon Estlund is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Shannon Estlund

Join NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota at the Hair and Nails Gallery for our 2nd Annual Art Salon. Come to mingle, admire and purchase the work of local artists, and support a good cause! 100% of proceeds go to NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota.
There is a suggested $10 donation at the door.

My paintings and paper cut-out installations explore our fleeting place in the vast patterns of migrations, climate change and time. I am drawn to insects for their elegant engineering, metamorphosis, crucial role in pollination, and their alien-like otherness that both captivates and repels us.

Commingling information from biology, textile patterns, and maps, my paintings combine layers of atmospheric depth with flat pattern. The result is often a blending of landscape, microscopic slide, and aerial view. Life forms inhabit terrestrial, aquatic, or atmospheric spaces, while articulating fragile and tenuous relationships within the complexities of changing habitats, insect migrations, and the aerial arena of flight.

The paper cut-out installations explore the concept of multiples in endless variation, the role of collections in natural history, and the astonishing fact that billions of insects are carried in air currents through the layers of our atmosphere – this idea serves as a visual metaphor to the broader context that all life is transitory and swept up in immense patterns of energy.Eleanor McGough

Group Exhibition features work by Rosalux Gallery’s three newest members: Betsy Alwin, John Gaunt, and Jim Hittinger.

Jim Hittinger’s paintings and drawings present a sparsely populated suburban dystopia. Andy Sturdevant, from the catalogue for Underlined Action (2015) writes:“What do we find in Hittinger’s world? Much of it seems ominous – the sirens and flags and safety orange suggest impending doom of some unspecified nature. The International Orange he employs frequently cuts through the gray in the same way the designers of the Golden Gate Bridge intended the iconic color of that structure to retain a high level of visibility through the thick fog rolling into the bay every afternoon – a warning as much as a visual signature. But there are some elements of humor and surreal whimsy that don’t make the visit uniformly bleak.”Jim Hittinger

Betsy Alwin
“My current series of works combines the pliability and strength of ceramics with the delicate structure of lace. In lace pattern, the negative space is intrinsic to its structure, carrying its pattern and a signified vulnerability. The forms I make allude to motifs of strength, stability and infrastructure. It is important to me that the lace be an actual structural element in the work. The lace conveys both strength and fragility, beauty and fallibility. This dichotomy, brought forth by surface texture and pattern, is further accentuated when put in relationship to other building materials, such as rebar and wood.

The use of lace is a very specific and personal choice. For me, it began as an experiment, trying to figure out how to convey a sense of temporality, a sense of ethereality embodied in strong form. The patterns themselves shape space in a graceful but orderly way, and when they are supporting either themselves or another object, that weight is emphasized. In these sculptures I wish to allude to the body (through the lace, a clothing material), to life (three dimensional form), and, then, to a balance between contradictions that becomes the subject of the work. Betsy Alwin

John Gaunt
I have an empiricist approach to making. In recent years I have been developing a kind of “graphic scaffolding” inspired by natural systems, philosophy and the shifting architecture of rivers. This scaffolding or intuitive gesture has become a malleable motif for me across artistic processes – allowing me to generate new combinations of abstract structures, illusionistic spaces and diagrammatic drawing. The accumulation of this practice is beginning to yield a kind of personal topology. John Gaunt

New Rosalux artist, Jim Hittinger, has an Open Studio event Fri. Feb. 24th, 7 – 10 PM.Come take a look at what Jim and 2 other artists Teréz Iacovino and Julia Maiuri have been working on in the studio. Visit Jim’s art website at jimhittinger.com